


mild effort

by ranchdiip



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: POV Second Person, POV Zim (Invader Zim), entirely to see if i'd enjoy writing an au idea, the answer was yes, this is just a funky little drabble written in like an hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28645518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranchdiip/pseuds/ranchdiip
Summary: hunting giant dogs could stand to be more convenient, in your very studied and correct opinion.zim, dib, and gaz talk (complain) about a werewolf.
Relationships: Dib & Gaz (Invader Zim), Dib & Zim (Invader Zim), Gaz & Zim (Invader Zim)
Kudos: 5





	mild effort

you’re sitting in a strip mall, trying to blink the dryness out of your contacts.

in the booth across from you, dib mutters something incoherent from where his face is pressed against the table between you. you sneer mildly and reach forward to pull on his cowlick, and he turns his head to glower at you over his glasses, ignoring when gaz - sat beside you - glances up from her phone long enough to take a french fry off his food tray.

“why don’t you come up with something, space boy?” dib mutters, petulant. his wallet and car keys are sitting on the table, untouched from when he’d dropped them there hours earlier. the clock in your PAK tells you that it’s fifteen minutes to noon; the three of you have been here since the mall opened at seven.

“why should _zim_ have to come up with a plan?” you snark back. the packages of fun dip on the table in front of you are unopened. you poke at them mildly, picking at the edge of one with a claw. “it was _you_ who lost the beast, dib-worm.”

you can’t be bothered to remember what dib called it. a wear-dog, or something. it was large, and covered in fur, and smelled horrific, but even rabid beasts have a preservation instinct; it had taken one look at your extended PAK legs and bared teeth and fled in the opposite direction. which _had_ been the plan—to corral the beast toward dib and gaz, who would catch and ‘cure’ it. except you spent forty-five minutes playing at herding the thing, and dib ended up losing sight of it in the dark, because human night vision is absolutely useless. hunting giant dogs could stand to be more convenient, in your very studied and correct opinion.

now, dib sits up and takes off his glasses, tossing them on the table. they land with a clatter next to his wallet as he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and groans, long suffering. you pick up his glasses and turn them to tap at the chip fused to the inside of one of the legs, squinting at the display that illuminates the lenses. dib pushes his hands up into his hair and props his elbows on the table, watching you without any real focus.

“not my fuckin’ fault its fur was dark,” he mumbles, “it blended right in with the trees, and it wasn’t as big as i thought it’d be.”

you scowl at the idea that a wear-dog could be even bigger than the one you encountered the night before.

“not like it’ll just disappear,” gaz contributes. this time, she doesn’t look up from her phone to steal a fry off her brother’s tray. her phone chimes merrily, and you grimace at the feeling of your antennae twitching underneath your wig. “just wait for the next full moon.”

“you really wanna just spend another month trying to track this thing?” dib asks, eyeing her.

“fuck no,” gaz answers immediately, “there’s no way in hell i’m letting you wake me up at two in the morning to go werewolf hunting for nothing again.”

a pause, then she adds, “not without compensation.”

dib squints at her suspiciously. “what kind of compensation?”

“indentured servitude,” you propose, using a claw to swipe through the display on dib's glasses lens. it’s an elaborate list of details about the beast you were hunting, but you cross off _est. approx. 10 ft tall_ and _pale fur,_ and add _bring flashlights next time._

“i was thinking something more public,” gaz counters. “put him in your old shloogorgh’s uniform and leave him on the front lawn for the school kids to laugh at.”

you bark out a harsh laugh at the image, even as dib splutters and snatches his glasses back from you. “that thing wouldn’t even fit me,” he argues, “it’s sized for zim.”

“it absolutely fuckin’ isn’t,” gaz snickers, at the same time you growl, “zim is a perfectly normal size!”

except you are, by human measurements, five feet tall, and dib is an infuriating six-feet-and-two-inches. you’re not as short among them as you are among your own people—there are humans even smaller than you—but dib had once tried to use you as an armrest and earned three broken fingers as a result.

“besides,” dib starts, “i think i finally figured out who it is—old man mcgregor’s son, remember him? i forgot his name, it was something stupid.”

“charlie?” gaz raises an eyebrow. you tear open one of the fun dip packets and dump its contents directly into your mouth.

“yeah!” dib snaps his fingers. “remember how he was, like, fucking obsessed with twilight? it’d figure he’d go and find an actual werewolf to turn him.”

“you think charlie mcgregor became a werewolf on purpose ‘cause he liked twilight,” gaz elaborates, slowly. she’s finally looked up from her phone, leveling an even stare at her brother.

you make a face at your now empty fun dip packet. “twilight? like when your star is below the horizon?”

both dib and gaz turn their heads to look at you, and gaz makes a noise that’s suspiciously akin to a muffled snort. you shoot a glare at her from the corner of your eye. dib groans and drops forward to press his face against the table again.

—

“i fucking _told_ you it was charlie mcgregor!” dib shouts at gaz a month later, as you harass the wear-dog against the side of the steep hill they’re standing at the top of, PAK legs extended to their full length and sweatshirt sleeves pushed all the way up so they don’t fall over your claws if you need to take a swing.

“just shoot him, idiot!” gaz shouts back.

you hear some fumbling, and then the sound of a gunshot, and the wear-dog jolts. except it doesn’t collapse, and the _tink!_ that follows the shot is the sound of the bullet ricocheting off one of your PAK legs, not burying itself in the shoulder of the wear-dog.

“not _zim,_ moron!” you snarl up at dib.

“it’s _dark!”_ dib hollers back, followed by the click of the gun being cocked and another shot.

this time, the wear-dog hits the ground with a wild yelp, writhing amongst the twigs and leaves and clawing uselessly at its own shoulder. you watch, disgusted, as its fur falls from its body and it shrinks, eventually leaving a naked and dazed-looking human in its wake, bleeding sluggishly from one shoulder.

you scowl and lift a hand to obscure your vision of the human’s extra parts, turning your eyes away once dib begins sliding down the slope with a bag that you know is full of clothes and a first aid kit.

“gross,” gaz complains from the top of the hill.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i should've known i'd end up here eventually  
> this was a bit of an experiment to play around with an au idea i've had for a bit. no, it's not like bamsara's cryptid hunters; i've never read their fics (though i do adore their art). this was just a super at-the-beginning portion of it that'd be easier to make a oneshot of  
> maybe i'll make it an Actual story or maybe this will just sit as a standalone. depends entirely on whether i'm actually stepping back into my iz fixation or not lmao


End file.
